Time to Tune Out the Loudmouth

By Lindsay Gellman

It’s time to tune out the loudmouth who monopolizes meetings.

Teams often struggle to determine whether those with the strongest personality necessarily have the sharpest insight, but new research suggests that groups that take the time to sort out actual experts from loudmouths who only sound like they know what they’re talking about perform better in problem-solving tasks than those that don’t. That’s according to a new study from the University of Utah and Idaho State University.

“We’d hope that facts would be the currency of influence,” Bryan L. Bonner, lead author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. “But often, we guess at who’s the expert—and we’re wrong.”

People tend to rely too much on “messy proxies for expertise”—such as a speaker’s confidence level, extroversion, gender and/or race—and not enough on the content of his or her contributions, when making judgments about expertise, says Mr. Bonner. Doing so can be costly if the group doesn’t heed those with the most relevant knowledge, Mr. Bonner says.

The correlation between a speaker’s confidence and his or her expertise is often “very small,” he adds.

The findings mainly apply to group problem-solving tasks for which there is a correct answer (or answers), such as estimating the number of product units your firm will ship next week or valuating a company, and less so to more subjective tasks, like generating ideas for a marketing campaign, Mr. Bonner says.

So how to prevent chatterboxes from taking over a meeting you’re running?

Instead of launching right into a discussion, frame the meeting as a fact-gathering mission, Mr. Bonner says. Encourage everyone to contribute, he says, and keep a running list of facts to promote shared understanding.

Mr. Bonner notes that sometimes, the most vocal team members do in fact know best. “If you’re listening to the confident people and they’re right—great,” he says. Just don’t let the expertise of quieter colleagues get lost in the shuffle.